Mabeuf's Bible
by AMarguerite
Summary: Wherein Monsieur Mabeuf is almost late to Mass, meets Colonel Baron Pontmercy, and cries over the loss of his books. Because M.Mabeuf is neglected by everyone, even the characters of the novel itself.


Disclaimer: This is all Victor Hugo's creation: character, meetings, list of Mabeuf's books, etc. I just elaborated upon it.

A/N: '_Pardi!_' in French, means 'Of course!', or so I'm lead to believe by Baroness Orczy and my French to English dictionary.

* * *

Monsieur Gabriel Mabeuf ran his fingers lovingly over the gilded pages of his Bible, a sad smile twisting his withered visage. He looked up from it, struck with uncertainty. His bookcase was slowly becoming emptier as the days progressed, like the hair on his head. He ran a hand over his balding pate absently as he contemplated the bookshelf.

It seemed disrespectful to sell his Bible, but it was that or _La Marguerites de la Marguerite_, and he couldn't bear to part with that. Besides, man could not live on bread alone, but on the word of God. So the word of God feed the hopefuls who read and believe it, should it not? How better could the word of God feed its followers than by providing dinner?

Monsieur Mabeuf sadly traced the engraved lettering on the leather cover. Books held more stories than were written in them. This Bible... Monsieur Mabeuf pensively weighed the heavy tome in his left hand. He had had the Bible the first time he saw his departed friend, Colonel Baron Pontmercy.

It was a very windy day, the trees swaying, like tired ballet dancers put through their pirouettes one last time. Monsieur Mabeuf had to clutch his hat fiercely to his head, and was hard put to keep his Bible under his other arm. The wind fought his steps, and the wind froze his ungloved fingers and the tip of his nose. But he was the Church warden, and it was time for Mass: he could not afford to be late to the Church of Saint- Sulpice.

Though his trousers were tugged back by the wind, Monsieur Mabeuf broke into a sort of half- trot and managed to get to his seat only slightly later than usual. He slid into a velvet chair with a little sigh of relief. It would not be good for the church warden to be late for his duties.

The priest had not yet begun Mass, and Monsieur Mabeuf took the opportunity to scan the congregation for unfamiliar faces. Many heads were bowed in reverence to the altar in the front of the sanctuary, but one man, with curly black hair, was leaning his head heavily against a pillar, his eyes sparkling oddly. He had a ferocious saber- cut across his face, and he had a red scar on the hand that held his hat.

Monsieur Mabeuf quietly drummed his fingers on his Bible, contemplating the man. He had seen many moved to tears in the presence of the Divine, even before it was Mass, but never a man who looked quite so war- like in aspect.

The man, Mabeuf realized, was staring at something. Monsieur Mabeuf became very curious. The man was battle- scarred, and he was young, hardly older than Mabeuf himself was. It seemed rather odd for a soldier, probably distinguished, by the look of his scars, to be moved to tears.

Mabeuf carefully turned and observed two people in the front row to be the intense object of the man's scrutiny.

There was a little boy, with a head of curly hair just like the man's, swinging his feet over the edge of a chair, and a woman with a dress fastened up to her chin. Mabeuf was momentarily amused by the woman's dress. It seemed as austere as any nun's robe, but had pearl buttons set in gold in a neat row on the front. Humanity was a comical thing.

Monsieur Mabeuf took an immediate liking to the little boy, as he swung his legs up fast enough to make his trousers flutter. The woman had her lips pressed together, and pressed a heavy hand on the young boy's shoulder. The boy looked ashamed, then straightened and studied the altar as if his very life depended upon it. Children: so precocious, and so precious.

Mabeuf turned his attention back to the soldier. The man raised one battle- scared hand to his eyes, causing his hand to glimmer, as well as his eyes.

'How odd,' Mabeuf thought, smoothing out the leather cover of the Bible. 'The man cries... surely it cannot be a love story, between the soldier and the woman, like my housekeeper's novels. Those novels are not very good, in any case. I should get Mère Plutarque to read more poetry.'

His train of thought was cut off, as the priest entered, on winged words of Latin. Mabeuf straightened, and with a fond smile at his Bible, it was a very nice copy: he must remember to get a copy like it for his brother, the curé at Vernon. His brother's Bible was falling apart at the seems. Such a disgraceful state for a book!

The next week, Mabeuf went to church at his appointed time, stopping, every now and then, to pluck a flower, growing unprepossessingly in the grass. These he pressed in a volume of Alde, which he had tucked under his arm. In doing so, Monsieur Mabeuf carried around his two great loves: botany and books. It seemed to him a marvelous thing to be able to carry them both about.

Instead of sitting on the churchwarden's bench, as he usually did when he arrived at the right time, he sat in the velvet seat. He caught a glimpse of the little boy, sitting quietly in his chair, and the woman, this time in a gray dress that reminded Mabeuf of a storm cloud, and further reminded him to water his plum tree. However, the man was not there.

'I wonder that the man is not here- I thought that he would be,' Monsieur Mabeuf thought, before turning to his book.

Yet two months later, when Mabeuf had once more brought his Bible along with him, the soldier was back, furtively sneaking tear- filled glances at the young boy and the prudish woman.

'How very strange,' Mabeuf thought, once more drumming his fingers against his Bible. 'I wonder that a man who looks so much like a man would weep as openly as a woman bereft of her child. And I wonder that he only comes every few months. Perhaps it is on business, and he likes to stop by this church.'

From then on, he kept a look- out for the man, as if the man were a book whose pages had become splotched with rain, so that the ending was no longer legible. The man appeared every two or three months, always crying over the little boy. Mabeuf himself, could not understand why the man would weep over the little boy. It was surely not over the little boy's conduct: the boy was always polite and well- behaved, obeying the woman (His mother? His aunt? His nurse?) in all things. The little boy had once tried to hold open the heavy wood door to the church for the woman, giving up only when it proved that his own weight was insubstantial to the door, and he fell over.

Children: the most innocent and the most enjoyable people to watch. Mabeuf had picked up the little boy as carefully he would one of his beloved hybrid plums, dusted him off, and held open the door for the two. He had smiled when the boy, blinking back tears of embarrassment, thanked him in a whisper, and bowed to him.

The soldier could not be weeping over the woman. Mabeuf had noticed that the man always looked at the little boy.

Perhaps the man cried over the boy because he had lost a son who looked very much like the polite little boy.

Mabeuf often wondered about the man when he had a spare moment, but he was not a pressing concern.

Mabeuf read and cultivated his fruit trees, as always, and fulfilled his duties as churchwarden. He visited his brother at Vernon every few months, and stared at expensive books with longing.

It was on one of his visits to his brother that Mabeuf found a first edition of a volume of Elzevir in a bookstore.

"Ah, if only I were rich," Mabeuf sighed, placing the book back on the shelf lovingly, like a parent tucking his child to sleep at night. "What a marvelous book."

His head full of the thought of the book, a new copy of the Bible tucked under his arm for his brother, Mabeuf set off across the town. He strolled leisurely over a bridge when he caught a face out of the corner of his eye.

It was the man, limping slightly, toying with a rosette on the lapel of his blue jacket. He was staring at the ground in front of him absently, then walked off the bridge into a little house with a thriving flower garden.

The thought of the volume of Elzevir vanished, and Mabeuf was intrigued by the man. Mabeuf liked anyone with a flower garden, but the flower garden was rife with exotic plants, some of which Mabeuf had only seen in his books. Besides, it was very curious that the man should wear a rosette declaring him a member of the Legion d'honneur, and be living in such a small cottage. There was also the matter of the little boy at church, as well.

Mabeuf smiled. It was if he was about to translate a work of Aristotle from Greek to French, and at last be able to uncover its secrets. His brother was the curé of Vernon! Surely he'd be able to tell him who the soldier with the scar was.

"Christian!" Mabeuf called cheerfully, upon reaching his a house at the end of the bridge. "I have a new Bible for you."

A man opened some window shutters and leaned out. Upon seeing the slight figure of Monsieur Mabeuf, he smiled.

"Many thanks, Gabriel," the younger Mabeuf replied, leaning his elbows on the window sill. "I had been in need of a new one: I am glad you found one for me."

"You can always count on me for your literary needs," Gabriel Mabeuf answered. "Shall I come in?"

"_Pardi!_ Forgive me, Gabriel. I shall be down to open the door for you." The next minute, the Mabeuf brothers were embracing each other, and our Monsieur Mabeuf was questioning his brother.

"There was a man, a soldier, I believe, with a saber- cut on his cheek, and a very well- kept garden...."

"Ah! Major Georges Pontmercy... or rather, Colonel Baron Pontmercy, as he likes to be called. A severe Bonapartist, brother, with a fancy for flowers. He is a rather subdued fellow from what I know, but I do not know him all that well. Has his garden appealed to you? I knew it would. You were forever playing with _maman_'s flowers when we were younger. Shall we go and visit him?"

Thus started a long friendship between the three men. Gabriel Mabeuf discovered that the little boy was named Marius, and was the son of Major Georges Pontmercy. Georges was forced to be separated from his son, lest Marius be disinherited by his maternal grandfather and aunt.

Monsieur Mabeuf sat on his heels on the floor, staring at his Bible. A tear trickled down his cheek. Now they were dead: his brother and his friend. Marius visited occasionally, but had fallen in love and had not shown up for several months. The Bible was all he had left to remind him of them.

Yet the stomach has an even stronger control over the body than the heart. Monsieur Mabeuf cradled the Bible in his arms like a baby and carefully took it to market.

That night, his bread and potatoes tasted of tears. Mabeuf could not figure out why until he realized he was weeping into his dinner.


End file.
